Hold On to Your Kids Publisher: Ballantine Books Paperback – January 1, 2006

I'm so happy to review this book because it absolutely changed my life and my daughter's life forever! I will be honest with you and tell you that I was at my wit's end. My 13 year old, who used to be a sweet kid became constantly defiant and depressed at home. The kid who obviously loved me, I'm a really cool mom, now ignored me and rolled her eyes. Her grades were suffering and she began stitching into her skin during school. This is when someone sews shapes into their skin with a needle and thread. So I got this book.I read the book very quickly because it resonated so strongly with all I was going through. Our society values peer influence so highly and at such a superficial level that we are losing our kids to isolation and hopelessness disguised by technology and unhealthy friendships.I pulled my daughter out of school in her last semester of 7th grade. This meant that she would have to repeat 7th grade and be a year behind. As a single mother with her and a baby, as well as a full-time career I committed to homeschool her. We worked out a strange schedule of night and weekend study focused on real life skills and developing her values system. She was indignant...at first. After the first two weeks things started to ease. She began applying herself more, she softened, started taking great love and responsibility with her sister and with our home. I followed the advice of the book and rebuilt our relationship and the tenderness we have for each other. She was honest with me! She broke down and told me about all her fears and walls.The girl that just wanted to be on the internet or texting in bed was now going to the gym several times a week, going for walks with the kids around the neighborhood, volunteering to help younger students learn to read and really working on improving our family relationships. She stopped yelling at me and ignoring me!! She reached a healthy weight, she was way too skinny.During that one school year we did two years of work and caught her up. She entered high school today, right on schedule! She held my hand as we drove to the bus stop. She was excited about meeting new kids and really applying herself at school. This week she received an award for her volunteer service over the past year. Also, on a daily basis, I have people tell me what a remarkable and intelligent child I have. Last year, she was depressed and aloof, people were concerned about her.Reading this book led me to make a very difficult decision that I thought was absolutely beyond my capacity as a mother. I believe if I hadn't put her first and done everything I could to get her away from her unhealthy friendships that I would've lost her forever and her academic possibilities and life possibilities would have suffered severely. No one agreed that I was doing the right thing! (The school, her father, my mother, no one understood why I needed to this.) This book gives practical step-by-step instructions to get your kids back from unhealthy destructive behaviors that are becoming more and more prevalent as a result of our current culture. If you are losing your child people act fast and be brave. It was the best decision I ever made.

The basic theory of this book is deceptively simple, but its implications are pretty staggering. I genuinely think that this book could change the world. (As I write that sentence, I know it makes me sound a little overzealous, but this is the one book I've ever read that I truly wished every parent, educator, and policymaker would read.)Other reviewers have described the basic premise of the book better than I can: the theory that various events and trends now cause children to become "peer-oriented" at much earlier ages than has traditionally been the case. In other words, children have a natural need to connect with and depend on someone, someone who fulfills the child's natural need for approval, connection, education, role-model behavior, etc.. Until a certain age, that role should be primarily filled by an adult; once the child is mature enough, she naturally orients more toward peers. The problem is that, more and more often, the point at which peers replace parents in this role is happening at an unhealthily early age -- at an age where (a) as a matter of evolution and biology, the child still requires her parent(s) to guide to to maturity, and (b) the child's peers are themselves too young, mercurial, and immature to provide any security or stability. It causes children to push their parents away, to become difficult to teach, and to remain in a state of frustration and insecurity that prevents them from maturing into independent, empathetic adults.One reason the book resonates so much with me is that I already see signs of this kind of thing in my child and her friends, and I've seen the same things happen in children I've worked with over the years. For example, I already see how desperately my daughter and her friends (in pre-kindergarten) long for the approval and affection of their peers. In a way it's very sweet -- but, because their peers are all also merely children, the approval and affection are never constant day-to-day (or even minute-to-minute), and there are constant hurt feelings on both sides. I can only imagine how much more intense these social issues will be as they grow older.To take another example: The book notes that there is a real drive in this country to push children to be independent, but that pushing children to be independent too early actually has the opposite effect. It actually creates the false appearance of independence: children have a natural need to be dependent, but they just transfer their dependence to their peers. I noticed this in the children I used to work with -- that the children who seemed the most independent (in the sense that they seemed relatively uninterested in their parents' presence or opinion) were the ones who later seemed to create arbitrary cliques, and to become very status- and appearance-oriented.I worried when I bought this book that it would be an "Attachment Parenting" book that would appeal only to co-sleeping, homeschooling types. But it's actually not at all. It expressly reassures parents that daycare need not be a problem, and the solutions it suggests are appropriate for working parents or stay-at-home parents alike. The principles and suggestions in this book would be extraordinarily helpful to any type of parent, with any type of parenting style, from the most traditional to the most crunchy.

I teach a class to teens called social skills for life, and I coach parents in how to make their teens feel seen. No book has been more important to my ability to speak to the divide that exists and begin to give guidance on how to heal it. Total game changer with my own kids, too.

Everything we’ve previously learned about parenting was wrong. This book actually makes sense and works. The advice is useful and actually feels good. I’m deeply saddened I didn’t have this knowledge before becoming a parent!